 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Actifio Data Driven 2020 brought to you by Actifio. Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of Actifio Data Driven 2020. Really excited to dig into a fun topic. I have a CUBE alumni with us. He is a DevOps author and researcher. Gene Kim, Unicorn Project is the most recent. Gene, great to see you. Thanks for much for joining us. Stu, great to see you again here at the Actifio conference. This is fantastic. Yeah, so your new book, it was much awaited out there. Unicorn's always discussed out there, but the Phoenix project, as I said, is really the seminal book when people say, what is that DevOps thing and how do I do it? So why don't you give us a little bit as to the Unicorn project, why it was important, why we're excited to dig into this and we'll tide into the discussion we're having here for the next normal at Actifio. Oh, for sure, yeah, in fact, yeah, as you might have heard in the keynote address, you know, what vexed me after the Phoenix project came out in 2013 is that there are these still looming problems that still remain seven years after the Phoenix project was written. And, you know, these problems, I think, are very important around, you know, what does it really take to enable developers to truly be productive instead of being locked in a tundra of technical debt? Two is, you know, how do we unlock truly the power of data so that we can help everyone make better decisions, whether it's a developer or anyone within the business units and the organizations that we serve? And then three is like, what are really the behaviors that we need from leadership to make these amazing transformations possible? And so the Unicorn project really is the Phoenix project retold, but instead of through the eyes of ops leadership, just told through the eyes of a phenomenal developer. And so it was amazing to revisit the Phoenix project universe in the same timeline, but told from a different point of view. And it was such a fun project to work on just because, you know, to relive the story and just expose all these other problems not happening, not on the ops side, but from the development and data side. Yeah, there's always, there's characters in there that I know I personally and many people I talk to can really associate with. There was a return of certain characters that quite prominent like Brent, don't be the bottleneck in your system. It's great if you're a fighter, firefighter and can solve everything, but if everything has to come through you, his pager's always going off, he's getting no sleep and you just get stressed out. Talked a bit more about the organization and there are the five ideals in the book. So maybe if you can strongly recommend, of course, anybody at ending active view got to copy the books, they'll be able to read the whole thing, but, you know, give us the bumper sticker on some of the key learnings. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so the five ideals, represents five ideas I think are just very important for everyone in the organization to understand, especially leadership. The first ideal is locality and simplicity. In other words, when you need to get something done we should be able to get it done within our team without having to do a lot of communication, coordination with people outside of our team. The worst, the most horrible feeling is that in order to do a small little thing, you actually have to have a coordinated action that spans 15 teams, right? And that's why you can't get anything done, right? And so that's so much the hallmark of large complex organizations. The second ideal is what I think the outcomes are, which is focus, flow, and joy. You know, I've now started to, for the first time in 20 years, self-identified not as an ops person, but as a developer. And I really now understand why we got into technology in the first place is so that we can solve the business problem by hand, unencumbered by minutia, and that allows for a sense of focus, flow, and even joy. And I love how Dr. Mahaley Chew sent Mihaly described. He said, flow is a state that we feel when we love our work so much that we lose track of time and maybe even sense of self. And so I think that we all in technology understand that is how it is on the best of days and how terrible it is when we don't have that sense of flow. Third ideal is improvement of daily work, being even more important than daily work itself. The notion is greatness is never free. We must create it and must prioritize it for the psychological safety and the fifth is customer focus. So those are all things I think are so important for modern leaders because it really defines the future of work. Yeah, we love that flow when it happens. Otherwise we're stuck in that waiting place as you quoted Dr. Chew. So one of my favorite books there also. So Gene, for this audience here, there was, yes, CICD is wonderful and I need to be able to move and ship fast, but the real transformational power for that organization was unlocking the value of data, which is I think something that everybody here can. So maybe to talk a little bit about that, we've almost talked too much. Data is the new oil and things like that, but it's that, allowing everybody to tap in and leverage real time what's happening. We're just at the early parts of the industry being able to unlock that future. Oh yeah, I love that phrase, data is a new oil, especially since oil, the last 50 years, the standard pours 500 was dominated by a resource extraction oil company and so forth. And now that is no longer true, it's dominated by the tech giants. And Columbia, there was a Columbia Journalism Review article that said data is not only the new oil, it is really the new soil. And for me, my area of passion for the last seven years has been studying the DevOps Enterprise community where we're taking all the learnings that were really pioneered by the tech giants, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, and seeing how they're being adopted by the largest, most complex organizations on the planet, the best known brands across every industry vertical. And it is so true that where the real learning gets exploited is through data. This is how we get to know our customers better. This is how we understand their wants and needs. This is how we test and make offers to them to see if they like it or not, to see if they value it or not. And so for me, one of the best examples of this was the target transformation and Adidas, how it was just an amazing example of to what lengths they went to, to liberate developers from being shackled by ancient systems of records, data warehouses, and truly enabled developers to get access to the data they need, modify it, even delete information, all without having to be dependent on integration teams that were essentially holding them hostage for six to nine months. And these programs really enabled some of the most strategic programs at their organizations, enabling hundreds of projects over the years. So I think that is really just showing to what extent the value that is created by unlocking data for individuals. I'm sorry, see one more thing that I'm just always dazzled by. My friend, Chris Berg, he told me that somewhere between a third and a half of all company employees use data in their daily work. They either use data or manipulate data as part of the daily work, which that population is actually larger than the number of developers in an organization. So it just shows you how big this problem is and how much value we can create by addressing this problem. Well, it's interesting, if it's only a third, we still have work to do. What we've been saying for years is, when you talk about digital transformation, the thing that separates those that have transformed and those that have it is data needs to be at the core. I just can't be doing things the way I was or doing things off intuition, being data-driven. I'm sure you know the saying, Jean, if you're not, if you don't have data, you're just some other person with an opinion. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. And in Risto Salasmo's amazing book, Transforming Nokia, he said exactly that. And he said something that was even more astonishing. He said, there's not only at the core, but data also has to be at the edges. He was describing at Amazon, anyone can do an experiment at booking.com. Anyone can do an experiment to see if they can create value for the customer. They don't need approvals from committees or their manager. This is something that is really, truly part of everyone's daily work. And so to me, that was a huge aha moment that says, to what degree our cultures need to change so that we can not only use data, but also create learnings and create new data that the rest of the organization can learn from as well. Yeah, one of the other things, I definitely felt in your book, you synthesize so much of the learnings that you've had over the years from the DevOps Enterprise Summit. The question I have for you is, you hear some of these great stories, but the question is, are companies, are they moving fast enough? Are they transforming the entire business? Or have they taken, we've got one slice of the business that is kind of modernized and we're going to get to the other 30 pieces along the way. But, there's wholesale change, 2020 has had such a big impact. What's your thoughts on how we are doing in the enterprise on pace of change these days? That's a great question. I mean, I think some people, when they ask me, how far are we into kind of total adoption of DevOps? This newer, better way of working and I would say probably somewhere between five and seven percent, right? And the math I would take them through is, there are about 20 million developers on the planet, of which, at best, I think a million of them are working in a DevOps-type way. But yet, that's only growing. I think it was an amazing presentation at the DevOps Enterprise Summit in London that was virtual from nationwide building society, the largest organization of its kind. It's a large financially, mutually owned organization for housing in the UK. And they talked about how post COVID, post lockdown, suddenly they found themselves able to do the miraculous things that would have normally taken four years in four weeks. And I think that's what almost every organization is learning these days, is when survival is at stake, we can throw the rules out the window, right? And do things in a way that are safe and responsible, but create, satisfy the business urgent needs, like provisioning tens of thousands of people to work from home safely. I think this shows, I think it's such a powerful proof point of what technology can do when it is unleashed from, perhaps unnecessarily burdensome rules and process. And I think the other point I would make, Stu, is that what has been so rewarding is the population of these technology leaders presenting at DevOps Enterprise, they're all being promoted. They're all being given new responsibilities because they are demonstrating that they have the best long-term interest of the organization at heart. And they're being given even more responsibilities because to make a bigger impact to the organization. So I'm incredibly optimistic about the direction we're heading and even the pace we're going at. Well, Gene, definitely 2020 has put a real highlight on how fast things have changed, not just work from home, but the homeschooling, telehealth, there are so many things out there which there was no choice but to move forward. So the second presentation you participated in was talking about that next normal. So give us a little bit of stuff. What does that mean? What are we should be looking at going forward? Yeah, it was great to catch up with my friend, Paul Forty, who I've known for many, many years and now VP of sales at Actifio. And yeah, I think it is amazing, the academic Dr. Colada Perez, she said in every turning point where that sets the stage for decades of economic prosperity usually comes by something exactly like what we're going through now, a huge economic recession or depression following a period of intense re-regulation of this new technologies unlocking new ways of working. And she pointed exactly to what's happening in the COVID pandemic in terms of how much the way we're working is being revolutionized, not by choice, but out of necessity. And as she said, we're now learning to what degree we can actually do our daily work without getting on airplanes or meeting people in person. I have so many friends in the travel industry. I think we all want normalcy to return, but I think we are learning potentially, there are more efficient ways to do things that don't require a day of travel for a couple hour meeting and a day to return. So I think this is being demonstrated. I think this will unlock a whole bunch of ways of interacting that will create efficiency. So I don't think we're going, as you suggested, there will be a new normal, but the new normal is not going to be the same as your old normal. And I think it will be in general for the better. So, Gene, you've gotten to see some of the transformation happening in the organizations when it comes to developers. The DevOps Enterprise Summit, the state of DevOps. I think five years ago, we knew how important developers were, but there was such a gap between, well, the developers are kind of in the corner, they don't pay for anything, they're not tied to the enterprise. And today, it feels like we have a more cohesive story, that there is that, as you put in the Unicorn project, it's business and IT and the developers can actually drive that change and the survival of the business. So, are we there yet? Success, are the developers now have a seat at the table or what do you see that we still need to do? Yeah, I think we're still, I mean, I think we're getting there, we're closer than ever. And as my friend, Chris O'Malley, the CEO of the famously resurgent mainframe vendor, Compuware said, you know, it is, everyone is aware that you can't do any major initiatives these days without some investment in technology, right? In fact, you can't invest in anything without technology. So, I think that is now better understood than ever. And, you know, just the whole digital disruption. I think is really, no one needs to be convinced that if we, large complex organizations don't change, they're at risk of being decimated by the organizations that can change using and exploiting technology to their benefit and to the other person's detriment. So, and that primarily comes through software and who creates software developers. So, by the way, I love the Stripe CE, it was a CFO Stripe who said the largest constraint for them is, and their peers is not access to capital, it is access to development talent. And I think when you have CFOs talking like that, right? It does, it suggests that something really has changed in the economic environment that we all compete in. So, I mentioned on the research side, one of the things I've loved reading over the years is that fundamental discussion that going faster does not mean that I am sacrificing security or, you know, the product itself, you know, in the last couple of years, it's, you know, what separates those really high performing companies and, you know, just kind of the middle of the ground. So, what advice would you give out there to make sure that I'm moving my company more along to those high performing methods? Yeah, right, just to resonate with that, I was interviewing a friend of my, Mike Nygaard, a long time friend of mine, and we were talking on, and we were recalling the first time we both heard the famous 2009 presentation doing 10 deploys a day every day at Flickr by John Osbaugh and Paul Hammond. And, you know, we were both incredulous, right? We thought it was irresponsible, reckless, and maybe even immoral what they were doing, because, you know, I think most organizations were doing three a year, and that was very problematic. How could one do 10 deploys a day? And I think what we now know with decisive evidence, especially through the state of DevOps research, is that, you know, for six years, 35,000 plus respondents, the only way that you can be reliable and secure is to do smaller deployments more frequently, right? It makes you be able to respond quicker in the marketplace, allows you to have better stability and reliability in the operational environment, allows you to be more secure, allows you to be able to, you know, increase market share, increase productivity, and, you know, have happier employees. So, you know, at this point, I think the research is so decisive that, you know, we can, there's a whole book, Accelerate, that really makes the case for that. This is something that I now have moral certainty or even absolute certainty of, right? It's, you know, self-evident to me, and I think we should have confidence that that really is true. Wonderful. Well, Gene, thanks so much for giving us the update. Really appreciate it. Some really good sessions here in Actifio, as well as the book. Thanks so much. Great to talk to you. Stu, it's always a pleasure to see you again, and thank you so much. All right, that's our coverage from Actifio Data Driven. Be sure to check out thecube.net for all of the on-demand content, as well as, as I said, if you're part of the show, definitely recommend reading Gene's book, The Unicorn Project. I'm Stu Miniman, and thank you for watching theCUBE.